


Unique to Him in All the World

by DWEmma



Category: Fleabag (TV), Le Petit Prince | The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:15:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21828826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DWEmma/pseuds/DWEmma
Summary: The Priest should have dipped into other nostalgic literary children's books if he wanted to know what foxes want. They just want to be tamed, to be unique in all the world.
Relationships: Fleabag/Priest (Fleabag)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 37
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Unique to Him in All the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [valderys](https://archiveofourown.org/users/valderys/gifts).



“"Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ." Chapter 21 of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The first thing I have to explain to you is that I’m not God. Nor am I messenger of any of the incarnations of any god that humans have constructed in their own images. That being said, I’m not not god, either. I’m...something else. Something beyond your understanding, at least. 

The only way I can explain it is with the hopes that you have at least a basic scientific understanding of how light waves work. You know how there’s the visible light spectrum? Your ROYGBP, or ROYGBIV, if you’re old fashioned? Let’s call those colors our characters. Our protagonist, she’s red. Orange is her sister, Yellow is Boo, Green is her Priest, Blue is her Father, and Purple is her Godmother. All the other characters are the colors between the colors, since we all know that humans decided where the colors cut off anyhow, so it’s always imperfect. Always imperfect, those humans. 

But outside of the visible light range, that range that washes together to make white light, to make everything we can see, there’s on one side infrared, and the other side ultraviolet. You’re infrared. You’re the light that no one can see, but that sits there next to red and keeps everyone warm. You can feel it as you watch all this, the warmth of the blanket you’re under, the warmth coming off your electronic device...you’re infrared. I’m ultraviolet. 

Well I’m part of the ultraviolet spectrum. There’s the UV-A, UV-B, UV-C...UV-C causes cancer you know, and no matter how many times you get checked for it, it can get you. We’re the things you can’t see that change things. Make things fall off walls. Make babies happen. Or not happen. Make animals behave erratically, and I do include humans in this when I say animals. 

Now this is just a metaphor, of course. You’re not heat, they’re not light, and I’m not actually capable of shining a light on our protagonist’s bedspread to see what remains of all that sex she gets up to. But we both observe. The difference is that she can see you, she can’t see me, and I can change things, and you can’t. 

He loves nostalgia, our Priest. Winnie the Pooh for one, but as a boy he loved Le Petit Prince. He even watched that ridiculous television show barely based on the book. He knows what a fox means. He knows. He wouldn’t be so scared of them if he didn’t know. 

Read Chapter 21 if you never have. Go on. Look at a different part of your screen. I won’t mind. I’ll still be here. http://www.angelfire.com/hi/littleprince/framechapter21.html 

For those of you who didn’t follow the link, I know I can’t control you. As I said, I’m not a god. I can’t make you do anything. So a brief summary of the point I’m trying to make is that the fox lets the Little Prince tame him. He ceases to be one of many. He becomes unique in all the world, which comes with its ups and downs. And while the fox is no longer anonymous and alone in the world, he also can be hurt. He can be left. The Little Prince does leave him. And everyone who makes the leap and allows themselves to be tamed opens themselves up to that risk. 

Our Priest, he’s untamed. The child of alcoholics, the younger brother of a pedophile (which is a great joke, the priest and the pedophile, unless you start thinking about what being the younger brother of a pedophile might mean), the lost soul using sex as a way to get close to women without being tamed, without letting them tame him. Sees the Church as a way to stay safely untamed without the fallout of sluttishness. Thinks he’s found his way out, his way to cheat to get the closeness without ever being asked to open himself up. But he wasn’t meant to be a father to many, as he so idiotically said before I sent him a fox. He was meant to be father, however. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself. 

The Train. The first appearance of the fox. Shall we watch? Watching is what you’re best at, isn’t it? 

***

EXT. TRAIN - DAY 

A train quickly moves through the Irish countryside. 

INT. TRAIN - DAY

A SEXY PRIEST (28) is sitting on a train, reading a battered copy of When We Were Very Young. He’s not wearing his little collar thing, so no one knows he’s a priest. 

SEXY PRIEST (quietly to himself)   
But they didn’t wear coats and they didn’t wear trousies, and they didn’t wear stockings and they didn’t wear sockses.

He smiles to himself, charmed by the simplicity of the poem. But his smile reaches out to a WOMAN (23) sitting across from him, and catches his smile when she looks up from her reading, and she thinks it’s for her. 

WOMAN  
Hello. 

SEXY PRIEST  
Oh. Hello. 

The woman’s legs are crossed, and she recrosses them in the other direction. An innocent movement on her part that throws our recently ordained and not wearing the little collar thing priest into a moral quandary. 

SEXY PRIEST  
I’m a priest. 

WOMAN  
Oh. 

SEXY PRIEST  
Catholic priest. Newly, um, ordained, catholic priest. 

WOMAN  
That’s nice. 

SEXY PRIEST  
So if you were trying to say hello to me, for, well, as a man...

WOMAN  
I wasn’t. 

SEXY PRIEST  
Well you shouldn’t. Because I’m a priest. 

WOMAN  
I believe you. I was just saying hello, Father. 

SEXY PRIEST  
Well you can do that. You should do that. I’m meant to guide, em…to love all women, equally. I mean, humans, not only women, I’m now an equal opportunity lover of mankind. 

WOMAN  
I’ll just be going back to my reading, then. 

She looks down at her copy of The Little Prince, and completely ignores him. He awkwardly shifts a few times, and tries to go back into his poetry, and finally gives up, grabs his bag, and heads to the restroom. 

INT. TRAIN RESTROOM.

The train is pulling into the station as the priest pees into the train’s urinal. He didn’t account for the change in momentum and splashes his shoes. 

SEXY PRIEST  
Fuck! 

He is looking down at his soaked shoes when the foxes begin to scrabble at the window, trying to get in. 

SEXY PRIEST  
Fucking foxes? 

They’re almost violent, really trying to get into the window, which is only propped open a few inches, but they’re really trying to get in there. The train starts up, and they hold on with their teeth, being dragged along, the wind ruffling their fur, until one at a time they let go, making a yelping noise as they fall toward the ground. 

SEXY PRIEST  
What the fuck was that? 

***

He didn’t pay attention. To the book she was carrying, to the foxes pushing him back to her. And it wasn’t really about her, mind you. She was absolutely fine. Someone he might have fallen in love with in the proper circumstances, with the proper lighting. She wasn’t fire. At the time, I didn’t think he needed fire. At first I thought I could coax him back onto the right path, Show him that becoming a priest was the coward’s way out, at least for him. (There are people meant to be priests, you know. But they’re taking the oath as a mark of bravery, not a mark of cowardice.) 

And so I started sending the foxes as a direct reply. 

***

INT: MONASTERY CHAPEL - NIGHT

A SEXY PRIEST (29) is on his knees in a chapel praying all by himself. There’s an empty bottle of whiskey next to him on the floor. His face is flushed, the face of a man who finished a bottle of whiskey. 

SEXY PRIEST  
Hello there, God. Me, again. Going to try this again, drunk this time. Hope you’ll forgive the out loud talking. I feel like I need to be accountable for all of this, like there’s someone else here needing to hear me saying this for it to be real. But I’m ready. I’m just so ready to be a priest, to have my own flock, to give them all the love that I have to give. I don’t know what to do with all of this love I have inside of me. I don’t know where to put it. I figure, well I figure that if I was meant to give it to one person, I would have learned how to do that by now. But I have so much love to give. Please show me that I’m on the right path. Please give me my own community and let the Bishop trust me to be the Father I know in my heart I can be. All I need is a sign. Amen. 

The priest stands up, slightly tripping over his cassock, toppling over the bottle, sending the sound reverberating through the chapel. 

SEXY PRIEST  
Fuck! 

He picks up the bottle, and swinging it at his side walks out of the chapel. 

EXT. MONASTERY GROUNDS - NIGHT

The drunk Sexy Priest stumbles along the path to the dormitories. Behind him is a fox, but he’s too drunk to notice. 

INT. MONASTERY DORM - MORNING

The Sexy Priest is asleep in a cot in a sterile room with nothing but a crucifix on the wall and a bible on a small bedside table. He fell asleep in his cassock, the whole thing rumpled and strewn about, his sheets a tangled mess on the cot. Suddenly his eyes fly open. 

SEXY PRIEST  
Fucking hell. There’s a fox. I fucking know it. 

He gets out of bed and looks out the window, and sees the fox, the same one from last night. 

SEXY PRIEST  
Go away, you. Fuck. What do you want from me? Why are you watching me? What do you mean?

The fox just looks up at him and doesn’t reply, as he is a fox. 

***

Because I can’t talk to him any more than you can talk to her. I’m not a passive watcher like you, forced into codependency and then shoved out of frame when it’s convenient. But I can make things happen in their world. I can push him in the right direction. 

And honestly, he’s so scared of the foxes being there, so trained that when he starts questioning his choices that one might show up, half the time I didn’t need to even send a fox. 

But then fire happened. She showed up out of nowhere. 

Or did she? Did I manipulate events so that Martin would send Jake to his parish, his parish long before it was his, so that when Claire married Martin, when Claire’s mother died and her Godmother nabbed her father, that she could introduce the new priest to the happy couple, thus allowing him to meet HER? Or was it just luck? I’ll never tell. 

But I did send the fox that night, that night that he told her about the foxes. 

***

EXT. CHURCH - NIGHT

The SEXY PRIEST (35) sits with SEXY WOMAN (33) in camp chairs behind the church. They’re drinking M&S G&Ts in a can. 

SEXY PRIEST  
Where did you just go? 

SEXY WOMAN   
Nowhere.

SEXY PRIEST  
Okay.

They both scream when they see the fox. The Sexy Priest begins to run away. 

SEXY PRIEST  
I’ll, I’ll see you later. I have to go inside. I have to go....fucking fox! 

The woman shrugs, and stands there staring at the fox, the scream having been due to being startled rather than actually afraid. 

SEXY WOMAN (TO THE FOX)   
You on my side or his? Because it really looks like you’re on his, since you scared him inside, and I’m out here all alone. (PAUSE --TO HERSELF) Now I’m talking to a fox. It’s a good thing I’m in therapy because I’m standing outside of a church talking to a fox. (BACK TO THE FOX) I’m watching you. Don’t cock block me again. Do you understand me? 

***

And of course I sent him to that bus stop, that second time he left her at the bus stop. He had been tamed. He was refusing his new calling, but he had been tamed. She had tamed him. He had tamed her. He had wasted so much time on her. She hadn’t just wasted a week. She had wasted much more. And that was what made them so important to each other, as the fox said to the Prince. 

***  
EXT. BUS STOP - NIGHT

SEXY PRIEST  
Uh, see you Sunday? I'm joking. You're never ever allowed  
in my church again. (They both laugh. Then pause.) I love you, too. (He pauses, trying to figure out what else there is to say.) Okay. 

He then walks off, not looking back. The woman returns to her crying until a fox walks up to the bus stop and looks at her. 

SEXY WOMAN  
He went that way.

The fox continues down the street, following him. He caught up easily, since the Priest had only made it to the corner and tucked himself out of view of her and any potential buses before he falling to the kerb and crying, head in hands.

He doesn’t sense the fox ahead of time. The fox goes right to him and lays his head down on the priest’s, bowing forehead to forehead with him. Even this doesn’t make him jump. 

SEXY PRIEST  
I know, I know. You’re a metaphor. 

He pulls his head out of his hands and looks at the fox. 

SEXY PRIEST  
I just can’t. I can’t be around her without being with her. I love her. (The fox cocks his head.) I know I know I know. But I can’t just...leave everything. I worked too hard for this. I love this, too. I’m going to have to give up a love either way. Are you from God? If God sent you, tell him it’s pretty fucked that he’s making me choose. That if he really loved me, he wouldn’t make priests have to give up...though I guess I might not have followed this calling if it wasn’t a way to step back...Ah fuck it. Tell just Him to fuck Himself: none of this is fair to me. 

The fox looks up, and he follows its gaze. The woman is standing there. 

SEXY PRIEST  
Did you follow me?

SEXY WOMAN  
You’re shouting at a fox quite loudly in a suburban neighborhood. I’m here to make sure you’re not either arrested or dragged off to somewhere safe with padded walls. 

SEXY PRIEST  
Right. 

He reached out and petted the head of the fox like it was the family dog. 

SEXY WOMAN  
Friend of yours? 

SEXY PRIEST  
Think it’s a messenger from God. 

SEXY WOMAN  
What’s God trying to say?

SEXY PRIEST  
Don’t know. Very frustrating, God. 

SEXY WOMAN  
Hence the shouting. 

SEXY PRIEST  
Hence the shouting. (Pause.) “I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you . . ."

SEXY WOMAN  
What?

SEXY PRIEST  
I think I figured out the foxes. 

The fox smiled. (Can foxes smile?) It gave the Priest one last nuzzle, tame as can be, and then walked off into the night. 

SEXY WOMAN  
Yeah? What do they want from you? 

SEXY PRIEST  
To tame me. For me to tame someone else. 

SEXY WOMAN  
Am I tame? God I hope not. 

SEXY PRIEST  
Not in that way, no. But to me you are unique in all the world. 

SEXY WOMAN  
Uniquely terrible. 

SEXY PRIEST  
Doesn’t matter. Terrible, good: it’s all the same. Unique and precious, different from all others. Utterly unforgettable. (pause.) My life is fucked either way. Shall we get an Uber together? I must have left something important at your place that I desperately need back tonight. 

SEXY WOMAN  
No, don’t play that game. You don’t need plastic fucking dinosaurs. Come back for me. Just...come back for me. 

He nods. 

***

And he goes home with her. And they figure it out. Somehow they figure it out. But that part isn’t my job, how he straightens his life out. It was my job to make sure he didn’t use the Church as a way to avoid life, to avoid being tamed. 

And remember when I got ahead of myself, earlier on? He wasn’t meant to be a father to many. He was meant to be a father to someone else. 

Because when priests stumble through their vows, like teenagers who have taken chastity vows, they are unlikely to use protection. And the giant box of grapefruits she had bought at a charity thing that were used in all the dishes at the cafe for weeks before the event interact poorly with her hormonal birth control. 

He was meant to be a father. But not to many. 

“You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed,” said the fox. 

And he was.


End file.
